HDD,SSD or Hybrid?

Need a storage medium for my PC build. HDDs are the most common I think but some can get slow. SSDs can't hold as much as HDDs, so should I get a Hybrid? But a friend of mine who's built a lot of PCs before said that they would be horrible. So what do you guys think I should get?

Current Samsung EVOs have been on sale a ton lately because of a new line of them coming out soon. I would get a 250GB SSD for your OS and current games your playing, then use Steam Mover to move the data over to a hard drive. I have a 120GB SSD right now, but with games starting to get larger, I'm starting to only be able to fit 2 or 3 at a time on them which is starting to annoy me.

Yep. Samsung 850 Pro for the SSD is what I'd recommend. Also, no criticism if that's what you want to spend, but $2800 seems like major overkill. You can build a kickass gaming PC for half that.

Seriously...with a budget like that I could probably build a machine that is in the top 0.5% of all gaming PC's. Maybe top .25%. Just for fun I'm going to take that budget and put something quick together, though. I'll paste it into the thread, will include monitor, kb&m, and either headphones or speakers.

And here it is: Probably could use with some tweaking, but I spent less than five minutes on this so, take it for what you will:

Need a storage medium for my PC build. HDDs are the most common I think but some can get slow. SSDs can't hold as much as HDDs, so should I get a Hybrid? But a friend of mine who's built a lot of PCs before said that they would be horrible. So what do you guys think I should get?

Your friend is being hyperbolic...and in my opinion is outdated in his thinking. But, here is the deal - You don't need a big SSD, you just need one 'big enough' for your OS (about 32 GB) and enough for important programs you want to load fast (so maybe a 120GB total). Then you just use a HDD for storage, and the price of a small SSD and good sized HHD is not really that much money. You can buy a small SSD for $60 to $120 depending on size.

If you cannot or don't want to pay for two drives and you want simple; than, YES, a hybrid drive is for you. A typical SSHD is 80 percent faster in performance than traditional 7200-RPM drive, so it not really a HORRIBLE choice. I myself use a small SSD and leave storage on a few HHDs, but that is just me...I also do weird RAM discs too...so I'm more in the hobbyist camp.

If I were building a computer, maybe my first computer, I might just go with a SSHD because you need only install one drive. That means less wires, less checking connections, less space used in a case.... and a really straight forward installation process for all software. And, as I said a SSHD is plenty fast for a reasonable price! An SSHD isn't really something to SAVE MONEY, because you can buy a small SSD and a big HDD for nearly the same price....the selling point is just installing one very quick drive that does all storage.

The only downside to having one drive is if that one drive shits the bed, right? And, in my whole life I have only had ONE drive fail on me in an irrecoverable way. Complete drive failure is rare, and it not a huge deal if you have a recovery disc.

I'll echo what everyone else has said. Don't get a hybrid, just get a small-medium sized SSD and a large HDD and you will be set. If your HDD is fast enough, load speeds for games will be negligible to the point where moving them over to an SSD to play will be kinda pointless. As such, just get an SSD for OS and main programs and store everything else on large 7200RPM HDDs.

For example, my setup on both my desktops (I have a Windows game-focused desktop and a Linux work-focused desktop) is a main SSD that is 120GB, and then a 2TB HDD for everything else. In fact, I even use this setup on my laptop because I ripped out the optical drive and replaced it with a 2.5" HDD. My main drive in that machine is an SSD and I have a spinny drive for storage. It works great in all cases.

I also use an SSD for my OS and regular HDD for storage. As others have said Hybrids are not the best option. My SSD has about 85GB so I have enough room to throw one or two games on that drive if I feel like it and the rest are on my HDD.

SSDs are completely overrated in my opinion... also what is the benefit of having a SSD for the OS only? so it will load faster? what for?

The only benefit is for gaming, and to do some serious gaming you'll need a lot of space, which costs too much for an SSD.

I say get 2 nice single platter HDDs, 500GB each, make a raid 0 array with them, done; Cheap, lots of space (for OS and games) and great performance, then get a 2-3 TB "green" drive just for storage, movies and stuff.

SSDs are completely overrated in my opinion... also what is the benefit of having a SSD for the OS only? so it will load faster? what for?

The only benefit is for gaming, and to do some serious gaming you'll need a lot of space, which costs too much for an SSD.

I say get 2 nice single platter HDDs, 500GB each, make a raid 0 array with them, done; Cheap, lots of space (for OS and games) and great performance, then get a 2-3 TB "green" drive just for storage, movies and stuff.

@flacracker: I did, and it loaded windows very fast alright, other than that no benefit at all.

Like I said, it has obvious benefits for gaming, but in order to have enough space to game you need to spend too much on a SSD, like for the price of a 128 GB SSD you can easily get a high performance 500GB or more HDD, put two of em in raid 0 and it's a far better bang for your buck imo

edit: of course, it depends on your habits, if you're perfectly fine on having only a few games installed at a time should be fine, for me it would just not work, I have 200 games installed right now... goddamn steam...

@onarum: Something must have been wrong with your hardware configuration...because man, after my first SSD there is no way I could ever go back to a system without one. Boot faster, copy & move files faster, games load lightning fast, completely silent operation with no moving parts. I'm not sure I have ever even encountered someone who has used SSD's in a gaming PC who would not recommend that route to others. They're that good.

I also have several terabytes of games installed, but usually only am actively playing four or five at a time at the most anyway. It's a simple matter to use SteamTool to move games back and forth off of the SSD to manage space, it takes literally seconds and only needs to be done once every few weeks or so. Not an issue at all, at least for me.

I completely agree. The first time I used an SSD was actually on a Linux work station that would boot within moments of leaving BIOS. From then on, I've built my PCs with one SSD drive and one HDD where the only bummer with Windows is that it doesn't really have a clean way make drives seamless (make everything appear like it is on one C: even though parts of it are on multiple drives) or have it seamless remount the boot drive to something else (make the drive with windows on it, something like W:\ while everything big HDD is C:\) without a lot of working at it.

The platform of SSD for your OS and core files and then large HDD for everything else is pretty solid. The only thing I will say is don't cheap out on the SSD, they're not incredibly stable or reliable to begin.

@mb: I admit I never used an SSD for gaming though, of course logically I know it will load them, stream resources etc ridiculously fast, but the price always put me off, considering I always liked having tons of games installed.

I was not aware of this steamtool though, seems handy as hell, and makes having a 128 - 256 GB SSD for OS/games feasible

My main point was that having a small SSD, like 64 GB or so, JUST for the OS would be completely pointless, yes it will boot lighting fast but you'll still be constrained by the HDD speeds when running games, copying files etc

Anyway I still like my raid 0 setup, takes about 8-10 seconds from switch on to login screen and games load pretty fast, as fast as a SSD? of course not, but my 1 TB raid 0 cost me like 1/5 of what would have spent on a SSD with half that storage capacity.

@onarum: Yeah, that's why hybrid drives or an SSD cache were decent solutions in the past. The premium of an SSD big enough to hold an operating system and core programs was just too much. That really hasn't been the case for a while now, and there are decent 500gb SSDs available for $200.

Honestly the convenience of barely existent boot and load times has made it a chore for me to use a machine with an HDD. Those seconds really add up.

The first time I booted from an SSD was an almost religious experience. I consider them to be pretty much mandatory for your boot drive at this point, and having a sizable SSD for games is likewise a really good idea. Prices are getting to the point where .33 or .50 cents per gig is not uncommon. A solid 256gig SSD will make you very happy.

Note that the brand of the SSD, while not as important as it was a few years ago when Intel was clearly the best choice for picking up an SSD that wouldn't destroy all your data, should still be considered. You don't want to buy a crap SSD just because it's cheap. I know Intel drives are still highly-regarded for their stability; I have one of those, as well as a newer Samsung, and I have no complaints. Do some research on the brand before you get one.

This is what I have and would recommend. But I also have another 1 TB installed, which I use for backups. I'll probably back all the data from the 3 TB drive up to an external eventually, so that I can use the 1 TB again.

My attitude is still to get a modest sized SSD (as much as you can fit into your budget/the best $-per-gig ratio and preferably pick it up when it's on sale) and one or more ridiculous capacity HDDs for storing stuff (unless you don't store a lot of data locally). Then for installing games I go with what makes the most sense - older games that aren't resource-intensive can stay on the platters, while newer and more demanding games go to the SSD. If it fills up, I can always swap out what is installed where (even easier with Steam) based on what I'm actually playing.

For reference, the bulk of my storage is split between a 64GB SSD (an older Crucial M4) for the OS, a 256GB Seagate SSD, and a 3 and 4 TB HDD.

As for hybrid discs, I've never been one to trust software to decide what to place in the speedy cache in an efficient or accurate manner, and with the average price differential I'd rather save the extra cash on something else.

Yeah, I second giving yourself some room in terms of your PSU. A PSU unable to keep up with everything you've got on board and everything you'll end up connecting might cause some unforeseen performance issues and even kernel panics related to power.

SSDs do use significantly less power than HDDs, however, so that's definitely a consideration in addition to the other recommendations already brought up.

As long as you go with a decent brand, you don't need to worry so much about wattage. The recommended wattage given by videocard manufacturers is generally significantly more than required to account for the fact that a lot of PSUs out there are garbage which can scarcely provide half their claimed power without blowing.

As long as you go with a decent brand, you don't need to worry so much about wattage. The recommended wattage given by videocard manufacturers is generally significantly more than required to account for the fact that a lot of PSUs out there are garbage which can scarcely provide half their claimed power without blowing.

Can confirm. I have a i7/GTX 780 being powered by a gold rated 450W SFX PSU. So long as the PSU can reliable output the power at peak wattage, going under 600W (the recommended amount of wattage by GPU manufacturers) is fine for single GPU builds.

@pcorb I really don't plan to OC. And I'd rather go for a "simple high end" build, like with air cooling and standard CPU and GPU models. I was thinking of using a GTX 780ti and an intel i7. Any comments or advice on the route I'm going?

@tentonalchemist: There's really very little to recommend an i7 over an i5 if the most CPU intensive thing you'll be doing is gaming. The increase in performance in games is negligible, and the $100 or so price difference is better spent pretty much anywhere else.

Do you know what resolution you're intending to use? If you're not going above 1080p, a 780ti is overkill.

I have a 4TB Seagate Hybrid and the improvement from a standard HDD is noticeable, especially on boot. Sure, it's not as snappy as a pure SSD, but it's faster than an HDD and I have tons of storage space.

@realkman: The newer WD reds are great for reliability and are basically totally silent (the latter might not be an important factor for most people, I just happen to like a build to be as quiet as possible). I don't consider maximising performance a priority, seeing as anything that benefits from high performance should be on the SSD. It's probably wiser to keep Windows 7 if you have a spare key you can transfer, but if you're going fresh, there's not much point in buying a 5 year old OS when a more recent and (ignoring metro) overall better version is available for not that much extra cost.

See my above response about the PSU.

@tentonalchemist: Even with a 780ti, maxing out everything for 4 years isn't terribly realistic. If you have a big old pile of money to burn, sure go for it, but buying video cards at the very, very high end is pretty much always awful value for money. You're paying around twice the price of a 770 for nowhere near twice the power. If you are going to get that tier of card, you should probably get a 290x anyway, from what I've heard they're slightly better and cheaper, although they run hotter. You might be able to get a bargain on a barely used 2nd hand one off ebay, if failed cryptocurrency magnates are still jumping that ship.

A more sensible route would probably be to buy a more modestly priced high end card today, and then do the same again in a couple of years when you start having to turn down settings to get 60fps.

I wouldn't say that, I bought a NVidia 580 back when that thing was blazing fast, bleeding edge new, and stupidly expensive and it is still good today. I got my entire worth out of it and then some.

Buying an expensive hardware makes sense if you plan to use it for a long time which is why I usually recommend spending up on those parts. That doesn't you should do it all of the time because there are clearly risks but it isn't foolish either. The important thing is to stick in your budget.